Tag Archives: Yoga

A private corn field near Utica Illinois bisected by a country road at sunset

A blog and You Tube channel sharing about culture, travel and a simple lifestyle.

Traveling through Jamaica we drive fast when the roads cooperate, feeling the wind, and listening to the crickets singing the song of the universe.

Ultra smooth and new highway in Ohio early morning. Surreal feeling traveling on it almost like a sled in the sky.

Rural Road in Virginia adjacent to a field and wildlife refuge.

Many Americans think of yoga as physical exercise, they know much of the practice involves a series of postures or “asanas” and narrowly focus on using yoga to be fit, ignorant of the larger possibilities. The word “yoga” comes from the Sanskrit root “yuj,” which means “to join” or “to yoke.” The term was used to refer to the yoking together of horses and/or oxen but it came to mean the joining together of the body and mind for the purpose of seeking the divine (my personal interpretation and there are many). Yoga involves breathing and meditation techniques as well as the discipline of physical postures and flows. Many schools exist with different orientations aimed at optimizing health and well being as well as guiding the student to consciously progress in the spiritual life.

Most of the seekers on the path to enlightenment acknowledge that this life is filled with the illusion of separation from the divine. Many spiritual disciplines aim to pierce the “veil” and bring us back “home” to our creator. We seek the literal “kingdom of heaven on earth” by embracing the great mystery and paradox that we must leave “home” or our own comfort zone to reunite with the essential self and shatter the illusions of the world. They say we forget the reality of our “true” – higher self, that we only remember in glimpses perhaps when we dream. The task of life is to remember, once again our true nature; to “know” it in our day-to-day reality. To “hear” this truth in the silent times that contain the seeds of all wisdom.

Travel necessitates leaving “home” and like Odysseus and others who Joseph Campbell said embark on “The Hero’s Journey” we must sometimes leave one world behind to find another. We may seek pleasure, adventure, gain or employment but most must strike out on their own in this life in the process of individuation, survival and/or evolution.

My “Hero’s Journey” involves a new career in commercial truck driving. In parallel my heart’s desire and gifts have led me to write an ebook for tourists to Jamaica with my partner, Fureus. Our book, Island Voices, Reggae and New Jamaican Music bridges culture and new music for the contemporary traveller.

Either in the air or on the road we who are moving from place to place are warriors and of an independent and odd tribe. I was forced to leave home in search of employment and have become a combination monk and American cowboy as a professional driver/nomad. Seeking to get to Jamaica as often as possible I am facing many challenges and having to live very simply. I experience much austerity and, often the gifts of random kindness while observing a full spectrum of humanity unknown to soccer Moms, cubicle dwellers and suburban commuters.

I practice yoga in my day to day life on the truck and maintain simple eating habits. I am grateful for fresh food and water when I get it. I discipline my body and especially my mind to maintain balance or otherwise be thrust into an emotional quicksand of sorts longing as I do for my home and missing the comforts of my lover, friends and animals.

Writing this blog and sharing my journey through photos and in the future video on my You Tube channel is one way I make sense of the hardships I encounter daily. My sense of the beautiful has expanded this year and my sensibilities as an artist are changing as I hone into the essential. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said in his great book, The Little Prince: “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

It is a mystery and another paradox that we photographers and artists seek always to express what is in our heart through our work. Visit this blog often to share my journey and in doing so the deepest recesses of my heart.